The Unquiet Dead (39 page)

Jessie looked out over the sad rectangles of land, some little more than a dumping ground for shopping trolleys and ancient washing machines, others cared for, worked over by gardeners who took pride in their plot. It wasn’t always about where you came from, it was what your attitude to it was. Did you want to leave the world a better place or destroy it? Did we come back over and over again until we got it right, only then free to move on to a higher plane? Was this hell, here on earth?

‘He hit her over the head from behind and smashed her skull,’ said Sally. ‘Death would have been instantaneous; she wouldn’t have known what happened.’

If it was over in that instant, maybe. But what if it wasn’t? What if the souls of those people who’d died in horrific and unjust situations did get stuck, as Father Forrester believed? What if they moved between us, unseen, angry and confused, until someone could help them let go? What would Mrs Romano have made of her husband cutting her up into edible pieces and cooking her? Jessie felt a damp, cold wind snake through her leather jacket and under her skin.

‘Find every bone,’ Jessie instructed the SOCO team. ‘Mrs Romano deserves a proper burial, alongside her son.’

Feeling shell-shocked, Jessie returned to the station with Burrows and Niaz to continue the search for Nancy and the hunt for Mr Romano. All exits out of the country were being watched. Moving targets were easier to find. But Mr Romano was wounded to the core, and wounded targets were desperate. Desperate meant dangerous. Nancy may have stayed hidden for years, but her danger was to herself. Finding her was going to require a miracle.

She was just on the verge of returning to the Scott-Somers house to grill Charlotte when Burrows walked through her door holding a photocopied letter of recommendation addressed to the head of social services. Jessie read it quickly. The letter was a character reference for a twenty-year-old woman called Rose Williams. According to the letter, she was efficient, kind and bright, and brought a caring approach to all her work. She helped out at her local dog’s home and had a volunteer assistant carer’s place at a shelter, where she had demonstrated exceptional ability in working with people who had special needs. Rose Williams was a saint. Certainly according to her referee: Dr Christopher Turnball of St Audley Street Surgery, Mayfair.

‘One of Nancy’s middle names is Rose,’ said Jessie, excited.

‘And if that were not proof enough, her paternal grandmother’s name was Williams,’ said Burrows.

‘He lied to me,’ said Jessie. ‘Dr Turnball said he didn’t remember Nancy having any connection with Marshall Street Baths.’

‘The council didn’t specify which of the baths under their jurisdiction they were going to send her to. So, technically, he didn’t.’

‘Rose Williams,’ said Jessie frowning. ‘Why does that name ring a bell?’

‘I don’t know, but she worked there for three years. Right up until the drowning incident.’

I’ve worked here all my life
. ‘Don’s scrapbook, where is it?’

‘Niaz has it.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Working on the charities.’

‘Let’s go.’ Jessie stood. ‘Good work, Burrows. You’ve done brilliantly.’

‘It was your idea, boss.’

Niaz was hunched over a computer. It looked like he had been there for some time. Information about each of the charities Nancy Scott-Somers supported had been meticulously entered on to a spreadsheet Niaz had designed himself. There were over two thousand so far, and further details were still coming through on the fax machine. The recipient organisations had been altered over the years to meet the changing misfortunes of the neglected. Niaz looked up from a stack of pages. His hands were smudged with print.

‘Children’s charities are clearly dominant. A
number of animal charities benefit too, but only on a small scale. She’s given a lot of money away.’

‘She had a lot to give,’ said Burrows.

‘What are the animal charities?’

Niaz handed over a master list. It was colour coded. ‘The animal charities are in green.’ There was money for guide dogs, the Battersea Dog’s Home, the RSPCA, mistreated horses, neglected farm animals and beleaguered cats.

‘Can you find out if any of them have received funds continually?’

Niaz nodded, pressed a few keys and waited a nano-second for the response.

‘NSPCC, Oxfam, the Red Cross, the Home for Beleaguered Cats.’

‘Cats,’ said Jessie. ‘How much?’

‘In total,
£
216,000.’

‘Lucky cats,’ said Burrows.

‘Nancy had a thing about cats. Remember the photograph of the place where she was held? The skeleton of a cat was hanging from a beam right above her head. Have you got the paperwork on these donations?’

‘Hang on,’ said Niaz. He pressed some more buttons, turned to a stack of grey folders and pulled a numbered one out. Burrows and Jessie looked at each other.

‘Who are the registered directors?’ asked Jessie.

Niaz skimmed the page in front of him, stopped, frowned, then brought the folder closer to his face as if he couldn’t believe the words. ‘The doctor.’

‘What?’

‘Dr Christopher Turnball.’

‘Anyone else?’ Jessie asked quickly.

‘No, just a company secretary.’

‘Called?’ asked Burrows.

‘Rose Williams,’ said Jessie, answering for Niaz.

‘Correct.’

‘Got an address?’

Niaz passed the open folder over to Jessie.

She felt a bubble of delight rise up in her. ‘We found her! We found Nancy.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Niaz.

‘I’m not sure I do either,’ said Burrows. ‘Why has she been sending her own money to herself?’

‘Burrows, show Niaz Dr Turnball’s letter.’

‘You think the
doctor
has been nicking her money?’

‘No. The amount is negligible.’

‘You think
£
216,000 is negligible?’

‘It is if you break it down to
£
250 a week. She had no other source of income – she worked for free; getting a job or claiming benefit would mean filling in paperwork, supplying proof of identity – so that
£
250 would have paid for rent, bills, food, transport. Let’s not forget, she could have had a hundred times that amount every month.’

Niaz finished reading the letter of recommendation. ‘He is still protecting the little girl he once took care of.’

‘Protecting, or perverting the course of justice? Nancy sends the money to herself so that she can
remain incognito. Murder is a good reason to stay hidden.’

‘I do not believe a doctor would do such a thing.’

‘Niaz, you’re too naïve.’ Jessie replayed the conversation with Dr Turnball in her mind. ‘He seemed so bloody sincere, charmingly warning me off – and all the time he knew exactly why I was calling him. If Nancy killed Hoare and the doctor knew, he could be in serious trouble.’

Burrows held her back. ‘Mr Romano is still missing. He could have killed Malcolm Hoare to prevent him protesting his innocence, the way he killed his wife to prevent her revealing where Jonny got the drugs.’

‘Mr Romano didn’t kill Malcolm Hoare. That was a revenge killing. Why else would he have been tied up in exactly the same way Nancy was?’

‘But we don’t know yet if they met,’ protested Burrows. ‘And look how much they’d changed – even if they had met they would never have recognised each other. They could have seen each other every week for the three years that Nancy worked there and never worked out who the other was.’

Jessie looked at him. ‘Of course. Burrows, you’re a genius.’

‘I am?’

Jessie grabbed the scrapbook lying innocuously on Niaz’s desk. ‘It’s been under my nose since the day we went into those baths,’ she said, flicking speedily through it. ‘Rose Williams … I knew I’d come across the name somewhere before. Father
Forrester was wrong about one thing, this never had anything to do with a girl called Ann.’

‘Anna – I thought he said Anna, as in Anna Maria Klein?’

‘Actually, he said Ann. I assumed he meant Anna because Anna Maria Klein was missing. But really this was about a woman who called herself Rose. Look –’ Glued to the fuzzy mauve paper was a newspaper cutting. They all looked at the feather-light document and weighed up its meaning. A sponsored swim had been organised to raise money for a minibus. There were young crash victims with legs and arms missing; a thalidomide victim with shrunken limbs; elderly people propped up in wheelchairs; stroke victims … Jessie knew the backdrop of the photograph well. It was the foyer of Marshall Street Baths. Standing at the back, turned towards the well-built, handsome lifeguard was a large, smiling lady. She had soft curly hair and laughing eyes. Her round face was hidden behind her fat hands, which were held up in a gesture of applause. A mask of pride. The only other person half-concealed from the photographer’s eye was a skinny man with slicked-back black hair. He too stood at the back, and even though half his face was obscured by another man’s shoulder, he too was smiling. Malcolm Hoare. A kidnapper who had once been described as a bear, standing alongside his victim, no longer the little angel.

‘Don told me about this before the explosion. I’ve
stared at this photograph for hours, but I didn’t see it.’ Everyone was smiling. They’d raised the money. Achieved a common goal. ‘I wasn’t looking for friends, all laughing together on the back row. Look – their names are typed out below: “Michael Firth, Rose Williams, and all the other helpers”.’

‘That’s Don Firth,’ said Burrows, incredulous.

‘Yes, this is who he was three weeks before Jonny Romano drowned. Before he dropped Michael and became Don. The life and soul of Marshall Street Baths. And these are the people Nancy and Malcolm had become. Judging from this photograph, neither of them had any inkling who the other was.’

‘They’re both hiding from the camera.’

‘Of course. They knew themselves, they knew who they were hiding from – the whole bloody world.’

‘What do you think changed?’

‘I don’t know. Let’s assume the group met on the same day as the school swimming trips, because Boateng mentioned seeing him there every Tuesday. Three weeks after this celebration, Jonny Romano drowned. It was February 23rd, a significant date for both of them. Who knows what might have come out during a conversation brought on by the tragedy of an innocent boy’s death or an angry mob’s hounding.’

‘If Malcolm Hoare had been there that day, wouldn’t someone have recognised him from Peter Boateng’s description of Ian Doyle?’

‘They were looking for a drug dealer, not a fundraising disabled man. And remember, Boateng left out the limp.’

‘Boateng thought he was a pervert, staring at them.’

‘Or maybe he was simply a loner, as he’d always been,’ said Jessie. ‘Either way, something good must have happened in both their lives,’ she added, looking again at the group photo. ‘They’re smiling. Despite themselves. Niaz, go and fetch the doctor. Burrows, you and I are going to find Nancy.’

The house in South London could not be reached by car. They had to go on foot, past a grim one-storey pub and along an alleyway that showed the tell-tale signs of marginal living. This was such an undesirable place it wasn’t even used as a rat-run. It cut through to nowhere. At first it was hard to tell which of the four two-storey residences were inhabited, such was their derelict state. ‘House’ was too generous a term for what stood before them. A room atop a room. The first window was boarded up, the next had curtains pulled against the light – somewhat ineffectually, for they were thin and hung loosely off the rail. Jessie initially dismissed them as drug dens or squats, and began moving towards the fourth,’ but then she saw something moving in the rubbish dump that had grown up in front of the door. She recoiled, the memory of the rats too fresh in her mind. A scrawny black cat darted towards
the third door and disappeared through a cat entry that had no flap.

‘She’s in there,’ said Jessie.

Already she could smell it: rotting flesh.

Burrows knocked on the door. There was no answer.

‘Can you break the door down?’ asked Jessie.

‘We don’t have to.’ Trying the handle, he’d found the front door was unlocked. He pointed out a wooden symbol nailed to the door frame. ‘A mezuzah,’ said Burrows. ‘It’s used in the Jewish faith to bless a house.’

It was dark inside the narrow hall. Jessie tried the light switch. Nothing happened. From the narrow strip of bald carpet that rose up the staircase, a phalanx of skeletal cats stared back at them. The stuff of nightmares. Past. Present. And Future. Predestined as Mary and Father Forrester thought, or self-prophesying, as Niaz believed, Jessie didn’t know. What she did know was that Nancy was here, alone, in the dark, surrounded by cats and that she was very afraid. On the wall hung the bleeding, anguished figure of Christ nailed to the cross.
Father, why hast Thou forsaken me
?

They saw the first dead cat in the doorway at the end of the hall. Jessie wondered whether it was fear of the deceased cat that kept the others on the staircase, or fear of what lay beyond it. Another mezuzah was stuck to the door frame. Above it was an Arabic inscription. ‘It’s a quote from the
Koran about the wrath of God.’ He looked at Jessie. ‘I studied all the major religions before deciding that Christianity was the one for me.’